Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Is Foie Gras cruel? Not necessarily so.

Foie gras is one of the great culi­nary enjoy­ments out there, but I’ve always won­dered if it’s an eth­i­cal item to use and enjoy.  After all, some­one force-feeding you would likely be a rather trau­matic ordeal.  You’d be kick­ing, scream­ing, gag­ging.  And if some­one did that to you repeat­edly, you’d need seri­ous ther­apy afterwards.

But is it the same with geese?  Or ducks?

Let’s take a look at this video first:

That seems pretty good, right?

Now here are some far-less serene videos to present some of the flip side from Que­bec.  Let me warn you, it’s not pleasant.

Now here’s one from Belgium:

Quite the con­trast, isn’t it?  How could any­one with a con­science eat foie gras after see­ing those last two videos?  Why is it so com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the first video?  Is that first video just indus­try propaganda?

Let me ask you first if you’ve seen the movie Food, Inc.- well, have you?  If you have, you’ll real­ize that cruel treat­ment of ani­mals is the norm for meat pro­duc­tion of all kinds.  Let me repeat that — it is the norm.  That doesn’t make it right, but it does mean that what you see in the videos from Que­bec and Bel­gium are, very unfor­tu­nately, not at all rare or in any way restricted to foie gras.

The guys work­ing in the Que­bec video are inhu­mane ass­holes.  There’s no way around it.  The ani­mals are suf­fo­cated as chicks, cru­elly treated all the way through, and treated in an alto­gether bar­baric fash­ion.  The guys work­ing in the Bel­gian video are, to me, your stan­dard meat pro­duc­tion employees.

So why is it so dif­fer­ent in that first video?  Is it fake?  Is it pro­pa­ganda?  It is pro­pa­ganda in the sense that it is one of the few places that will openly let a cam­era crew film what is going on.  But it is not pro­pa­ganda in the sense that it is staged and all for show.

If you will remem­ber from Food, Inc. — or as you will see when you go watch it — the major­ity of meat pro­duc­tion in the mod­ern world is inhu­mane.  It is the spe­cialty pro­duc­ers who treat the ani­mals well all the way through ’til the end.  It is that kind of spe­cialty pro­ducer that is fea­tured in the Anthony Bour­dain No Reser­va­tions video clip.

The real take­away here is not that foie gras is cruel or not.  The real take­away is whether the pro­ducer of your meat — any meat — is cruel or not.  Foie gras need not be cruel.  But it can be.  Choose who you buy your meat and ani­mal prod­ucts from, because in every sin­gle ani­mal prod­uct — includ­ing the burger you ate last week, or the pork chop, or the chicken breast, or that egg in your omelette — there is ample room for cruel and inhu­mane treat­ment.  But there are also those pro­duc­ers who treat their ani­mals ethically.

Yes, ethically-treated ani­mal prod­ucts will cost you more.  But you vote with your dol­lars — sim­ple as that.  If your dol­lar is worth more to you than your con­science, then you’ve made your choice.  But if your con­science tells you that eth­i­cal treat­ment of ani­mals is worth pay­ing a bit more, then give your busi­ness to the eth­i­cal producers.

Give your dol­lars to the kind of peo­ple you see in the first video, not the kind you see in the third.  And tear apart the bar­bar­ians you see in the sec­ond video.